Donald Trump’s California swing won’t include Fresno

For a time Monday, campaign officials for Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump considered a stop in Fresno this week before heading to the Bay Area for the state GOP convention.

But late Monday afternoon, Tim Clark, Trump’s California director, said that the candidate would not come to Fresno this week.

The GOP convention is from Friday through Sunday in Burlingame.

A detour to the central San Joaquin Valley at some point could make political sense. Joel B. Pollak, senior editor at large for politics website Breitbart News, wrote in a column last week that Trump will have to win the majority of delegates in coming contests to clinch the Republican nomination. In California, that means capturing at least 130 of the 172 available delegates, according to an Associated Press analysis.

To do that, Pollak said, Trump will have to win some areas leaning heavily toward Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump’s top opponent. “That almost certainly means Trump has to win at least one or two districts in Cruz strongholds in the Central Valley of California, with large numbers of Latino and evangelical voters,” Pollak said.

Trump has stopped in Fresno before. He came in 2007 amid much ballyhoo that he could resuscitate a failed golf-course project in west Fresno called Running Horse. After two months of talks with city leaders, Trump’s interest waned amid differences over price, financing and land acquisition.

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